Archive for March, 2015

We continue with the selection of home security items D-Link sent and explore a simple solution. This is the second of three products we will be looking at that work on the same platform and help notify you of any activity around your home you might not be aware of.

The mydlink Wi-Fi Motion Sensor is a simple plug with sensors built in to help monitor and area of your home for alert you of movement and perhaps take action.

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D-Link have sent a selection of their home security gizmos and together they work as a team to keep your home a little safer. Over the next three days we will be looking at three products that work on the same platform and help notify you of any activity around your home you might not be aware of.

The mydlink Home Smartplug is a simple automated plug system for activating or deactivating a piece of hardware whilst not being in the same area. Be it a lamp switching on in the evening whilst on holiday, regulating children’s game console playtime or simply turning off a TV at the wall to save a little power, the Smartplug helps give a little piece of mind.

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The Kitvision Escape Action camera is a cheap GoPro alternative. Costing as little as £35 on some websites the Escape is more than capable of capturing the action with little to worry the user if it were to be lost or broken.

In addition to the camera Kitvision also includes several useful add-ons to make mounting the camera easier. Included are a Bicycle mount, Helmet mount, Adhesive mounts, Tripod adaptors and Camera adaptors.

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Complaints about insurance are commonplace, but now buyers of gadget insurance may have more reason to complain than others.

The Financial Ombudsman Service (FOS) recently stated that it had seen a doubling of the number of complaints about gadget insurance throughout 2014 – more notably, it found that approaching half of all claims turned down were incorrectly turned down.

The FOS found that insurers had applied the terms of the contracts incorrectly to valid claims – that or, as the BBC reported, the terms were “so ambiguous it was hard to see how anyone could make a successful claim”.

The best gadget insurance – or is it?

This prompted Bought By Many to look at the best gadget insurance policies on the market and see if the terms were clear to us. Our review included Gadget Cover Supercover, i-Digital Premier, Insure My Pocket Platinum, Insure My Mobile Phone Gold, Protect Your Bubble,Gadgetbuddy.com, Switched On Insurance, and Helpucover.

What they found was surprising – so, they have laid out the top unexpected policy terms to help you be armed when you go looking for your policy.

How to tell if you have the best gadget insurance

1. 14 days…

Many people are familiar with a “14 day cooling off period” from phone and broadband contracts – that is a period after purchase when you as a customer can cancel the contract with no penalty.

Several of the top gadget policies reviewed contained a 14 day cooling off period but also a 14-day ‘exclusion period’. This stipulates that for 14 days after purchase, you cannot make a claim. It’s reasonable to expect you are covered from the moment you have bought your insurance, but here that may not be the case.

2. Travel

Some travel insurance policies won’t cover you for high value electrical items (a select few will), so people naturally expect their gadget policy will. All of the top end policies sampled allowed a period of time abroad per year, but the lowest was only 30 days – 3 long holidays could put you close to that limit, and the strict wording we reviewed would then mean any claim (relating to the travel or not) could be denied.

3. Not all gadgets are created equal

All policies reviewed had an age restriction on the gadgets – the lowest required that the gadget had to be under 18 months old on the day you take the policy out.

Some others required that the gadget were bought from a UK retailer, therefore excluding online auctions like eBay or foreign purchases brought back from holidays. Some also specified different excesses, depending on the gadget type insured.

4. Unattended?

Some would say that if you leave your phone on the dash in your car window then you deserve what you get. Insurers would tend to agree as they commonly had a definition of “unattended” which might include leaving a gadget in a car, leaving it out of sight or even in one policy “beyond arm’s reach”.

The terms may be more stringent than expected – in some policies reviewed, it was ambiguous over whether leaving your phone on a table with a friend was considered “unattended” or not.

Home insurance for gadgets

Those who have been listening in their insurance classes will know that your boring old home insurance can include cover for mobiles and other gadgets as named items.

The cover can sometimes work out cheaper than buying gadget insurance separately – though you do need to take care to make sure you’re getting the same kind of cover, as most home insurance policies would require upgrade options to ensure you are covered for accidental damage and when taking your items out of your home. By contrast, these are standard features on many gadget policies.

We hope this helps you in getting to grips with your gadget cover, demystifying some of the world of insurance and helping to navigate if you have a complaint!

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Piper are a high end home security system innovator. The Piper nv is their latest hardware combining an attractive design with simple accessibility to make you and your home more secure. Priced at roughly £217 this camera features night vision, easy to installation and a clean and intuitive control software. The app is only compatible with iOS or Android and there is no Mac or PC interface, not to mention Windows Phone. Check the video below as I set this up and have a play with some of the features including the bundled Z-wave plug adapters.

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Gareth, Jay, Dan, Phil and Matt get together for another chat about the most recent tech news. Matt has spent a stolen weekend with the HTC One (M9,) Net Neutrality becomes a bit of a problem here in the UK and

Thanks for the unboxing movie of the E355. I have the E355 which I’m trying to connect to 2 range extenders – a WS320 and a WS322 without success, despite it seemingly being a simple operation! The operation is described as making the hardware talk to each other with the correct sequencing of pushing WPS buttons. The thing is that the E355 doesn’t have a WPS button. . I’m assuming there’s an alternate process but I can’t find it! Please help.

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A few weeks ago HTC announced their latest flagship smartphone in the form of the HTC One M9. Building upon the successes of last year’s HTC One M8, the M9 shares a lot of the design heritage of its predecessors. You’ll find the aluminum uni-body construction is still a key focus of the range, albeit that this model has a new and attractive two-tone finish.

One of the more significant differences is in the camera department. Remember the 4mp camera with Ultrapixel technology that HTC have been trying to win us over with for the past two years? Well in a 180 degree u-turn, literally, the 4mp shooter has been removed as the primary camera and transplanted on to the front of the M9 as a its ‘selfie’ camera. While the primary camera now a more ‘conventional’ 20mp unit. In fact, having an Ultrapixel camera as the forward facing makes a lot of sense.

The M9 packs a decent spec, details of which you can find below, but it has been met with something of a mixed reception with claims that it’s nothing but a refresh from one side and those that hail it as a revolution.

In the video below you can see me going hands-on with the M9 and I’ll show you some of the hardware features and then run a benchmark.

There a a few more videos to follow where I look at the OS/UI in more detail as well as going in-depth with the cameras.

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As we all know, babies are dropped by storks down the chimney late at night to annoy an otherwise happy couple and throw their life into turmoil for the next 18-36 years. However, Samsung’s latest video uses the craziest of notions that babies are actually born of a physical person and they are using this fairytale to offer another reason for prospective customers to think about picking up a VR headsets. In the video one man is able to see the birth of his child in 360-degrees. The emotionally charged video popped up on Samsung Australia’s YouTube channel showing a poor bloke, over 2,485 miles away, attend the birth of this child using the Samsung Gear VR headset. Samsung has been calling this the world’s first “live virtual reality birth” using the Samsung Gear VR. This can be employed from the golf course and will give fathers everywhere a better, if not water tight, solution to avoiding the whole birth thing.

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We have seen this before and we will likely see this again. Some Sky Broadband subscribers suspected of illegally downloading movies could have their personal details handed over to what is know as a “copyright troll”. The service provider is obliged to turn over the names and addresses of the requested broadband customers to The Company You Keep (TCYK,) this action follow the loss of a long running court battle last year.

TCYK will then request compensation from the suspected torrent user by way of an IP address Sky attributed to the customer over the period suspected. TCYK are pushing to settle the case out of court under the threat of implied legal action,. The company monitors file-sharing websites for illegal activity and has internet service providers release details about the accounts holders suspected of infringing the copyright law.

“A company called TCYK LLC, which owns the rights to several copyrighted films, has claimed that a number of Sky Broadband customers engaged in unlawful file-sharing of some of its films,” Sky wrote in a letter to affected customers. “In support of this claim, TCYK LLC says it has gathered evidence of individual broadband accounts (identified online by unique numbers called IP addresses) from which it claims the file sharing took place. It’s likely that TCYK LLC will contact you directly and may ask you to pay them compensation.”

Sky is unable to vouch for the validity of TCYK’s claims, however they are advising customers to closely examine the wording of any letters they receive before parting with cash, and consult the overly burdened Citizens Advice Bureau if they have any additional concerns.

If you have received a letter from your internet service provider regarding a lawsuit by TCYK, LLC. or you have been named as a defendant, you should contact an independent copyright attorney that can assist you in the case.

Moving forward we have looked at a couple of Virtual Pirvate Networks over the years and whilst they are never 100% they can keep you a little safer when browsing. There is currently a deal running on VPN Unlimited who are offering their Lifetime Subscription for $39, or a 3 year subscription package for $19. A small price to pay for a little piece of mind.

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Huawei have two flagship phones out at the moment The Honor 6 and Honor 6+. Whilst these are not quite up to the level of excellence you might expect from Apple, Huawei isn’t afraid of having a go at a decent high end device. The Honor 6 we have here is a premium mid-range phone with some very respectable specifications and a build quality that will make any prospective customer look twice.